


Not Compromised if Compartmentalized

by fangirlSevera



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: A bit of schmoop, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Romance, Torture, a touch of angst, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 22:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5393357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirlSevera/pseuds/fangirlSevera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A botched rescue mission and years of repression seem to prove to Phil what he always feared: His feelings for Clint , his desire to protect him, was only going to lead to more hurt.</p><p>Written for the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Clint_Coulson_Exchange_2015/works">CC Holiday Exchange 2015!</a> <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Compromised if Compartmentalized

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeddyLaCroix (ReadyPlayerZero)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReadyPlayerZero/gifts).



> For [teddylacroix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ReadyPlayerZero/pseuds/TeddyLaCroix), who gave an impassioned prompt/paragraph about mutual pining. And hell yeah! That's my jam, too! I don't think I managed to hit every point exactly, but I hope it's still a satisfying story about two idiots being idiots in love (Plus a cameo from a certain someone special for you). 
> 
> I wrote Melinda as pre-Bahrain Melinda with mentions of Andrew.
> 
> I would love to give credit to my beta now, but then realized that to keen observers, it might be a giveaway....

The room was dim, damp, barren and cold, like all other makeshift cells inside villain compounds across the world over. Phil Coulson had seen many before, and would see many more in his time. The man who had tied his hands behind his back shoved Phil to the floor, dirty fingers squeezing a thick, warm stream of blood from the fresh bullet wound in his shoulder. The damage to his knee from a ricochet made it difficult to stand, but being shoved down on to the concrete was even worse. Phil gritted his teeth, but he couldn't completely muffle his agonized whine.

In front of him, Agent Barton looked up. He was bound to a metal chair, arms lashed behind his back. He was stripped to the waist. All of the exposed skin, from head to navel, was pale but for all the dark bruises and dried blood. One eye was swelling shut, the cheekbone underneath was likely broken. His mouth was set in a grim, determined line.

Through his own pain, Phil could feel his heart clench. His mind cataloging everything and comparing it to the last time he had seen Clint, whole and hale, only a week ago.

_The door burst opened. Clint charged through without a knock nor greeting, just making a beeline for the filing cabinet. "Oh, baby, come to daddy," he said, grabbing the pot of freshly brewed coffee right out of the maker. With one thumb he popped open the lid then tilted the pot up so he could drink directly from it, taking large gulps. Fortunately, Phil had already fixed his own mug only a minute prior. Clint always had some preternatural sense when Phil had a fresh pot in his office. It made Phil wonder if his sense of smell was just as heightened as his eyesight._

_Not letting the pot go, Clint sat heavily down on the sofa with a deep, borderline indecent groan. "That's the stuff." He lifted the pot again for another drink, only then noticing the other people in the room. "Oh, hey. Am I interrupting?"_

_Phil was having lunch with Melinda, boxes of Thai cluttering his desktop. Melinda still had a piece of shrimp held expertly in her chopsticks as she watched Clint make himself at home with a raised brow._

_"I'm interrupting." Clint's eyes flicked between Phil and Melinda, and he started to stand._

_"Not at all," Phil rushed to assure him._

_Clint shook his head. “I’ve got a briefing soon, anyway.” He shrugged. “Enjoy your lunch.” He gave both of them a jaunty salute with a grin and wink. He left with the coffee pot still in hand._

_Phil stared at the closed door with a confused frown. Melinda cleared her throat, pulling his attention away from the abandoned pot. She had her brow lifted still, her dark eyes scrutinizing him. “That was awkward,” she observed._

_He turned his confusion to her. “What was?”_

_“Spare me.” She rolled her eyes. “He clearly was expecting to have alone-time with you.”_

_“We spend enough time together.”_

_“But not as much as you’d like,” she said knowingly._

_Phil huffed. “I cannot let myself be compromised.”_

_“You already are. Put yourself and Hawkeye out of your misery, and the misery of anyone who’s had to spend ten seconds in your presence.”_

_“What you’re suggesting is inappropriate, unprofessional and unethical.”_

_“Is that what you’ve been telling yourself? That wanting him makes you some kind of monster? Have you guys even tried talking about it?”_

_“We both understand that our positions make it difficult-”_

_“But not impossible.”_

_Phil glared._

_“I’ll have to ask Andrew, but I’m sure there’s some studies about unresolved sexual tension being more detrimental to a workplace than romantic entanglements.”_

_“There are not.”_

_She shrugged. “If not, I’m sure this place has given Andrew enough material for one.”_

_“Fury-”_

_“Is just as sick of all your mooning and moping as the rest of us.”_

_Phil had no response to that. He returned to his lunch and grimaced. It had started going cold. Just as well, he was losing his appetite anyway._

“You will tell us now,” the goon said, gripping Phil’s shoulder harder, the blood flowing out faster.

“I told you assholes, I don’t know!” Clint shouted horsely. 

Phil was pushed forward, nose connecting with the floor. Their captor put his foot behind Phil’s injured knee and started to put his weight on it. Phil couldn’t stop his scream if he had wanted.

“Motherfuckers! If I did, I would tell you! I don’t give a damn about what happens to that merc. I wasn’t working with him. I don’t know his name!”

Phil wasn’t read in until after the mission had gone tits up, but he knew Clint was telling the truth. S.H.I.E.L.D. did not know the name of the mercenary that had recently been making a nuisance of himself. All they did know was that he had a penchant for extreme violence and chimichangas. 

Clint was sent out to track and tail the guy, discreetly gain the pertinent information S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to determine how to handle this new player. Clint’s last report was that the mercenary was in the middle of carrying out a hit on key member of a South American cartel. Clint followed him to an “abandoned” factory, ready to interfere, if necessary, if the merc’s mission was counterproductive to S.H.I.E.L.D. interests. 

The last of Clint’s audio feed had gone something like this:

“Holy shit!” 

“Whoops!” Said an unfamiliar voice. “Guy’s not here. Who’d think there were so many similar abandoned factories in Venezuela? Oh! Hey, handsome! If I wasn’t in a hurry, I’d ask for your number. Byeeeeeeeee!”

“What-”

Clint was captured soon after, obviously assumed to have been working in tandem with the man who cut down about a dozen men single-handedly. An hour later, Phil was woken from an uneasy sleep by a phone call from the director. “Bring your boy home,” was the order Phil was given.

But his own mission had not gone according to plan, the compound still on too high alert after the previous security breach. 

The rusty door of the cell slammed open. Through the haze of pain, Phil was still able to make out the quick-fire Spanish. Something was going on “down South.” Whatever it was made the interrogator step off and away from Phil. There was much swearing between the two men before the interrogator followed the other man out, not even giving his captives a second glance.

Phil stayed face down for a full two minutes, counting the time backwards in his head while he took deep breaths, inhaling the musky odor of the floor, the thick tang of human sweat and blood suffusing the air. With one last deep breath, he managed to push himself up with his right arm, and got his knees under him, trying to put as much weight as possible onto the uninjured one.

As he blinked away the black spots that danced in front of his eyes, he saw Clint sitting silent, his head bowed. “Agent, report,” Phil ordered quietly, his voice rough.

Clint lifted his head. His voice even worse. “Knew you’d come for me.” He smiled, the stretch opening the red splits in his lips, trickling new blood down his chin.

“Always,” Phil answered without even thinking. He shifted his position, hissing as his wounds protested the slightest movement. “Much good it’s doing us so far.”

Clint shook his head slowly. His breath hitched, and his next words were a whimper: “They broke my hands, Phil. My hands.”

The few feet between himself and Clint might as well have been miles for the time and effort it took for Phil to drag himself on one knee to the backside of Clint’s chair to assess the damage.

Clint’s wrists were bound by a pair of metal handcuffs, cinched tight so that even with the broken bones, Clint could not work his hands free, and probably doing nothing for his circulation. His hands were, in a word, a mess. Fingers were not meant to bend that way and in those particular places. The rest of his hands were near black with bruising and swelling. 

Clint’s hands, what he prized second only to his eyesight, were in ruins, useless. And without proper medical attention soon, the damage could be permanent.

Phil had personal experience with the strength and skill of those hands and fingers...

_Phil sat as his desk, typing up his after-action report. He had spent most of the op crouched in front of a monitor in the surveillance van, hours in fact. When the time for action came, he took down an armed perp with his bare hands easily, but his shoulders weren’t fully ready for it and were making their displeasure known now._

_Phil turned his head slightly to glance at his field notes. That small movement was the last straw. He clenched his teeth and hissed at the jolt that surged up his neck, preventing him from turning his head any further._

_Barton, who had been filling out the hardcopies of his paper work (or was suppose to be, Phil would later get a memo from Archives complaining about Clint’s doodles), looked up at his handler with a concerned frown. “You okay?”_

_Phil titled his head towards the opposite shoulder, trying to stretch the muscle. “Fine. Just my age making itself known.” The stretching didn’t help. He brought a hand up and tried working the kink out. He kept trying to turn his head more, but nothing seemed to be working._

_From the sofa, Clint cleared his throat. Phil flicked his gaze in his direction. Clint was staring at him with those large blue eyes. “I could, uh, help with that,” Clint half-mumbled around the thumbnail he was chewing on._

_Clint was clearly uncertain, maybe even nervous, about his offer. Phil was feeling exactly the same about answering. Phil swallowed. “I’m sure I just need a couple aspirins, I’ll be fine.”_

_Clint stopped gnawing on his nail and gave Phil a far more determined look. “Just covering up the feeling isn’t going to solve your problem.” His expression gentled. “Let me help you.”_

_And with that, Phil’s resolved cracked, like thin ice under his feet, and he wasn’t sure if he was completely prepared for the ensuing plunge. “All right.”_

_Clint stood and approached the desk. This was nothing to get into knots about, Phil’s brain rationed. They were just two colleagues with physically demanding jobs helping eachother out. This was no different than Phil applying butterfly bandages to Melinda’s brow. His and Clint’s relationship was at the same level of comfortable companionship. There was nothing more to read into the way Clint would steal Phil’s coffee and nap in his office._

_Right?_

_Clint’s hand hovered over Phil’s neck, not touching, but Phil still could feel the heat of it, and the rest of Clint standing close to Phil’s back. “Ready?” Clint asked._

_Phil let out a deep breath, willing his shoulders to relax. “Whenever you are.”_

_Clint’s fingers just touched first, assessing. The callouses on his fingertips were dry, but not unpleasantly so. Tentatively, the fingers pressed in, and Clint started a circling motion. It was nice. Phil really couldn’t remember the last time he even a had a massage. And neither did his muscles, nor his mouth. Even though Clint’s hand was not on his shoulders, Phil could feel the tension leaving them along with their strained brethren. Phil bit his lip, not wanting to moan. That would have been inappropriate. But some noise escaped like a little traitor._

_Behind him, Clint huffed a laugh. “Good?”_

_“Yeah,” it was good, but not quite- “Christ!” Phil yelped. Clint had shifted his fingers a little down and to the left, and pressed harder, right on the sorest part of Phil’s neck._

_Clint snatched his hand away, repeating apologies for hurting him further. Phil just as quickly reassured him. “No, it’s okay. It was a good kind of hurt.”_

_Clint’s breath hitched, but he replaced his right hand. Then Phil felt the left one and the slide a thumb along the top of the collar of his shirt. “I could- That is, if you don’t- It might be easier for me if you-”_

_They wouldn’t be an effective team if Phil couldn’t interpret Clint’s half-sentences. With a shiver, Phil closed his eyes, repeating to himself that this was still okay, still normal, to be loosening his tie and undoing the button of his shirt, just enough so that Clint could sneak his thumbs under the collar._

_Clint’s ministrations were almost as above the belt as one could get. And yet his touch was making Phil’s skin tingle and break out into bumps. He was standing close enough that Phil could smell him, the blend of coffee, S.H.I.E.L.D. soap, and a spicy tinge that was uniquely Clint. The way his thumbs pressed deep and slid up his spine to the base of his skull made Phil gasp and bite off a choked whimper._

_Above him, Clint made a similar noise. One hand trailed back down his neck and rested on Phil’s shoulder. The other shifted so that his fingers gently cradled Phil’s jaw, guiding his head back. Phil’s breath caught as Clint’s thumb found a sensitive spot behind his ear._

_“Sir. Phil...:”_

_Clint’s voice was close. He had bent down, hot breath ghosting across Phil’s cheek. Phil had his eyes closed, all he had to do was turn his head a little and Clint’s lips would be-_

_“Stop,” Phil commanded, opening his eyes, and pushing himself close to his desk, trapping himself, but also putting the slightest distance between him and Barton. He sat up straight and hastily redid his buttons and straightened his tie. “Thank you, but I think that’s enough.” He congratulated himself that he could fall back into his nonplussed agent mode, keeping his voice level while his heart was jackhammering._

_Clint stepped away. “_ Shit! _I’m sorry. That was stupid. But, I-”_

_“We can’t,” Phil said, gentle, but firm._

_“I know!” Clint almost shouted, face crumpled, upset. “I fucking know okay?” He retreated from the office without a look back, and without his paperwork._

It had taken a week for things to go back to normal between them, or at least being able to _act_ like everything was normal. Phil was relieved that Clint and he had come to a silent understanding, and that they could still be friends and functioning colleagues.

Or so he had thought.

Phil had rushed into this rescue mission, judgement impaired by his need to get to Clint. Everything he thought he kept well-buried inside himself beat against the surface. In a relationship or not, he was already severely compromised.

Phil tried examining the handcuffs to see if there was a way for him to undo them with only one working hand. The prodding made Clint cry out, so he stopped. 

Taking a deep breath in, Phil wrapped his hand around a rung on the back of the chair and pulled himself to feet. Breathing like a sprinter, and still bleeding, Phil maneuvered himself to be in front of Clint. He needed to see his face, have Clint see his, in some misguided notion of it lending reassurance to each other. But it just made their respective wounds more visible. “How are your ears?” Phil asked. 

"They left my aids in. Fuckers needed me to hear their dumbass questions, right? Right one’s broke though. One idiot hit too close, too hard."

Phil leaned over to examine the right side of Clint’s head. His ear was bleeding, fragments of purple plastic and wires had cut at the thin skin, pieces were left inside the canal. As gently as he could, Phil tried to remove some of it, no need for his ears to be damaged any further. Clint hissed. Removing a couple bits had started some small scrapes bleeding again.

Clint wore hearing aids for as long as Phil had known him. It was, unfortunately, one of the first things he had noticed about Clint Barton when he was first brought into SHIELD, a mercenary looking to change his course.

 _The actual first thing Phil noticed about the new recruit standing at Maria Hill’s side was that he was young, so young. The second was that he was_ gorgeous. _And didn’t that make Phil feel like a dirty old man? Phil was thirty-nine, only a few months shy from forty. And this sharpshooter with mythical accuracy had to be barely into his twenties._

_But the attraction was instantaneous, and so was the shame. A shame that had eased somewhat when he got his hands on Barton’s file and discovered the man was actually thirty-one._

_In that initial moment, Phil took in the large blue eyes and soft, smooth cheeks. The cherubic features and the hearing aids clipped to both ears gave him an appearance of vulnerability, igniting in Phil a surge of not only lust, but protectiveness. It was a terrible combination of feelings to have for another agent, and worse so for someone who was a subordinate._

_But of course, Clint wasn’t vulnerable, Phil quickly learned. He was strong, physically and mentally. His skills with a bow were beyond compare. He would sometimes play down his competency, but he was always dependable. He grew to be someone Phil admired._

_But then Clint would come back from an op hurt, or when he fell asleep in a safe house waiting for orders, or when he'd curl up in Phil's office, not saying anything after a debrief. Those times, the urge to comfort and protect surged again. Phil would momentarily forget a deadly assassin was sitting by him, not a defenseless civilian._

Clint was looking vulnerable now, in a way he hadn't when their captor was still in the room. Then, he still kept his anger and defiance on his face. Now, his head was hanging again, chin against his chest, eyes closed, breath shallow. Phil wasn't faring any better. Strength and equilibrium abandoning him, Phil fell to floor, jarring his knee, his arm, lighting up every nerve not dulled with exhaustion with bright, endless pain.

He wasn't able to protect Clint, to save him. In the end, he wasn't good enough, as he always suspected.

“I’m sorry,” Phil said, slumping against Clint’s leg, his forehead resting against a leatherclad leg. “I’m so sorry.” He didn’t even know if Clint was conscious, could hear him. But it needed to be said, not just for the botched rescue. For being incapable of protecting Clint from Phil himself and the hurt he had to cause him in the past. 

Phil was always so obsessed with making the world safe and happy, but he refused to take a portion of that happiness for himself or to give it to man he loved. 

Phil thought he heard an explosion in the distance. 

He passed-out.

He dreamed in black and red.

He awoke to white, calling Clint's name.

“Hey, you’re okay. He’s okay,” said a familiar, safe voice.

“Natasha,” he gasped, blinking away the nightmares. Her pale face and red hair came into sharper focus. “What?”

She shrugged. “I was in the neighborhood.”

Phil’s brain sifted through the drugged fog, recalling Widow’s latest mission details. “But-”

“Militant Alaskan secessionists aren’t going anywhere.”

Phil took a deep breath. He tested out the mobility of his extremities, and found some lacking. “Damage report.”

“Bullet wound in your upper left arm got infected. Lost some blood. Pins in your right knee. Nothing career ending.”

“Not because of the injuries at least.”

Natasha huffed, edging on a frustrated growl. “Don’t even start with that bullshit, Coulson. We’re all compromised, one way or another. The director worst of all, probably. The intel was bad, they had more men than we expected.”

“I was sloppy. I should have waited for better intel, so I wouldn’t have been caught, too. I fucked up because I wasn’t thinking like a professional.”

“And you’re saying you would have done it any different if it were May, or Sitwell, Hill?” Phil tried to argue, but Natasha kept going. “Fury _let_ me catch wind of your situation. And I dropped everything for you two. _Because_ I…” She cleared her throat. “Care.”

Phil felt tears prick the back of his eyes. Must have been the drugs wearing off, and his wounds making themselves known again. “Natasha…”

She straightened her posture, her face going back to its inscrutable set. “And because of _that_ , I’ve had just about enough of watching you be miserable and moping for no goddamn good reason.”

Phil was silent for moment. It could not have been easy for her to speak about her feelings like that, and he wanted to give her the respect of truly ingesting and considering her words. It was true, there were several people within S.H.I.E.L.D. he would move Heaven and Earth for. If no one made attachments among their fellow agents, they’d all be some kind of emotionless sociopath, and how could an entire organization made of that kind of person be able to properly help save the world on the small scale and the grand?

“How is he?”

“Apart from the bruises and cuts: two stitches, a broken rib, ruptured eardrum. Doc says they got to his hands just time. They’ll fully recover, but it will take a long while. He’s going to need a lot of help, someone with near infinite patience.” She raised her brows meaningfully.

“He has you.”

Natasha snorted. “Me? I’m not going to have time to babysit. Someone has to pick up the slack left by two agents on medical leave. Besides, I’d only last a week tops dealing with his whiny ass.” The door quietly clicked open and a nurse strode inside. Natasha took her cue to stand. “Rest.”

Through the exhaustion, medications, and lingering pain, Phil couldn’t be sure over the next few days how many of his conversations had been real or imagined. He was sure the one he had with Natasha was real, as was the visit from May. His imagination could not have recreated her particular eyeroll so accurately. He was fairly certain, however, that Fury didn’t bring him a bouquet of daisies that blinked at him with yellow eyes.

When he was well enough to be cognizant for more than an hour at a time, it was Maria Hill who pushed a wheelchair into his room. “He’s refusing to cooperate until he sees you,” she grumbled. “Medical staff are getting skittish. What they think he can do with his hands bandaged into mittens, I don’t know.”

With his arm braced to his chest to keep it immobile, and his leg kept straight in its brace, Phil needed all of Maria’s help to get from the hospital bed and into the chair. But the wheelchair was a powered one, with the little joystick accessible for his right hand. The medical room was too small for him to practice with the controls, so he bumped and swerved his way down the hall as Maria walked in front of him. He bumped unto her only once. The glare she gave him made sure of it.

She opened the door to another private room without knocking. “Here,” she said to its occupant before stepping back outside and making sure Phil actually made it through the doorway. Once Phil and chair were completely in the room, Maria left, closing the door behind her without another word.

Clint was sitting up in his bed, the bruises on his face faded to sickly greens and yellows, cuts healed to pink lines covered by butterfly strips. His expression underneath it all was one of pure relief. “Fuck, sir.” He swept his eyes over Phil, toe to head. “They told me you were okay. I just, I had to see.”

There was a gauze over his right ear. There was a new aid in his left. Phil maneuvered himself to that side. “Honestly, I’ve had worse.” And it was true. “How’re you doing?”

Clint raised his hands, both swaddled in bulky casts. “Gonna be pissing sitting down for the foreseeable future. They said I’ll be able to go back to active duty _in time_. Gonna be bored as hell meanwhile. And itchy.” He twitched his nose.

“I could help with that,” Phil offered.

“The itching or the boredom?”

Phil licked his lips and took a steadying breath. “Either. We could try seeing if there’s anything I can kiss better.”

Clint made a short gasp and his brows rose. “You serious, or just joking?”

“Both? I think flirting is suppose to be a bit of both, right?”

“Fuck if I know. Hasn’t been working for me for a while.” A corner of Clint’s mouth curled into a smirk.

Phil moved closer, positioning the wheelchair so he was alongside the bed, facing Clint. “It will work from now on.”

Clint groaned, pressing his head against the thing pillow. “You have the worst timing. You’re telling me it’s okay for me to touch now, when I fucking can’t!” He waved his arms vigorously in frustration. “Ow, shit.” He immediately brought them back to cradle against his chest.

Phil, despite himself, started laughing. Clint furrowed his brow at him, pouting, but couldn't hold the countenance for long, and joined in the laughter. Phil felt lighter than he had in months, maybe even years. 

“I love you,” he said, once he caught his breath.

Clint’s face softened into that achingly young way it was able to even after so many years of a hard and injurious life. “Aw, Phil, no. Couldn’t you have waited until we both had complete sets of functioning limbs?”

Phil shook his head. “No. I’ve waited long enough. Almost thought it was too late.”

Clint made a small, broken noise. “I want you to kiss me, but you probably can’t.”

Phil set his jaw, pressing his lips into a determined line. He had been denying Clint for so long, not anymore. He would do whatever it took to give this man what he wanted. Phil locked the wheels of the chair, and pushed himself up with one arm. He slid the hand to the mattress and balanced for a brief moment on one leg before managing to hoist himself onto the edge of the bed, hip snugged against Clint’s, the braced leg stretched out towards the floor. The position was awkward, leaning forward pulled on still-healing muscles.

But none of that matter when he felt Clint’s lips underneath his, both of them dry, a little chapped, but nonetheless perfect. The kiss stayed soft, chaste, a promise. They really couldn’t manage anything more.

When Clint sighed and relaxed under Phil’s touch, Phil pulled away to discover that Clint had fallen asleep. Phil smiled, heart brimming. He cupped the palm of his hand against a stubbled cheek. “I’m going to take care of you,” he promised.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A Merry Phlintmas to all and to all a good night!


End file.
